Posted on 08/11/2006 6:31:41 PM PDT by Arec Barrwin
Bush reads Camus's 'The Stranger' on ranch vacation Aug 11 7:14 PM US/Eastern
US President George W. Bush quoted French existential writer Albert Camus to European leaders a year and a half ago, and now he's read one of his most famous works: "The Stranger."
White House spokesman Tony Snow said Friday that Bush, here on his Texas ranch enjoying a 10-day vacation from Washington, had made quick work of the Algerian-born writer's 1946 novel -- in English.
The US president, often spoofed as an intellectual lightweight, quoted Camus in a February 21, 2005 speech in Brussels praising the US-Europe alliance and urging other nations to help Washington spread democracy in the world.
"We know there are many obstacles, and we know the road is long. Albert Camus said that 'freedom is a long-distance race.' We're in that race for the duration," Bush said in those remarks.
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absurd
He read nekked? That was a mental picture I did not need.
"The same summer he also spent plowing a hillside behind a pair of mules in Tennessee."
Ugh. I don't want to hear about his sex life.
I was going to join in but I can see the whole damn FR Roundtable is here in force tonight ...even the scoo bee doobie doo crowd.
If he wants to read with Laura, he should try "The Slave". A great story. He could then call up Gibson and give him a great movie plot. IB Singer was a great story teller. Wrote in Yiddish no less. Won the Nobel Prize on the basis of this novel. I think Saul Bellow translated the book.
If he wants OJT in crowd psychology, he should read the first 150 pages of "Crowds and Power" . Elias Canetti won the Nobel Prize in early 80's for this one.
Since they were both written by Jews, he might impress the PTB in Israel. They are also great books. Even this Slavophile can see that.
We all read The Stranger in French and in English, except algore who never went to class. Bush is probably refreshing his memory in an effort to understand the dems who get stranger and stranger every day.
A Minnesota resident with taste would easily catch the reference to Outshined.
Good evening, all.
Now, that is witty!
(And smart.)
/looking for deep meaning, conspiracy theories, and secret messages sensory off>
Well Scooby Doo can do-do, but Jimmy Carter is smarter!
The interesting thing for me, in this story, was Tony Snow saying Bush had just read the book recently, on his vacation.
The clear implication is that when he quoted from it last year, he was just reading what some speechwriter wrote for him to say. Which is probably true, but stupid of Tony to admit.
Including some right here on FR...
while he was inventing TV.
I wonder what fool advised this. "The Stranger" is not a great work, and not even a particularly important one. It is simply a short, easy-to-read "classic" -- classic in the sense that it's famous -- that happens to have been read by many "educated" people. Someone who wanted Bush to look more "educated" and thought of "The Stranger" as one of the books the "educated" have read and will recogtnize the title of, must have suggested this. It's indicative of how this White House works. There are so many other short classics, true classics, that Bush could have spent his time reading.
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